Geodes
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Geodes
Braunton School
Download film (right-click)Chemistry , Demonstration , Earth Science & Environment , Explanation , Investigation , Secondary
An investigation into rock cavities. With a hammer.
Director's Notes:
There’s a lot crammed into this film — plenty of script, some real investigative experimentation, close-ups, mistakes, wet chemistry, …
Quite how the group got it done in a day, we’re not sure. They must have worked like stink!
SciCast Notes:
I gave this group a box of little geodes, a hammer, and this Wikipedia page. They briefly looked panicked… then rolled their sleeves up and got stuck in. OK, so they had some help from their teacher, but the script and filming is all theirs. It’s a heck of an achievement — constructing an item like this isn’t easy, but they battled their way through, and at the end of the day they had a nearly-finished film — all I’ve done since is clean up the hammer smashing sequence a little, and shorten it all a little.
Lessons, then:
- Take it a step at a time. Sometimes you can spend so long planning that you run out of time to actually do anything. This group went at it the other way — they shot it piece by piece, putting it together as they went along, until they ran out of time. Hollywood films spend ages working out what to do — SciCast isn’t Hollywood!
- Check your facts very carefully. Regrettably, the film gets formation time vs. crystal size the wrong way around. Shame!
- Don’t wipe your nose when you’re on camera.
— Jonathan